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Mar. 25th, 2011 02:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cblj_backupA couple of years ago I was coming back from a camping trip with some friends when I got us truly, deeply, spectacularly lost in rural Missouri. This is easier than it sounds.
As we were getting ourselves found again, we either passed through the town of Skidmore or passed a sign announcing its presence, I don't recall which. Small heartland towns tend to look alike from the window of a minivan. Either way, something prompted one of my friends to turn to me and say, "Do you know about Skidmore?"
This is how I heard the story of Ken McElroy, who was shot in the middle of the day, in the middle of the main street of Skidmore, and whose killer has never been identified. When you hear the story from someone, it takes on the quality of a ghost story or a wild west myth -- McElroy, the town bully, was a livestock thief who'd been tormenting Skidmore, along with a few other small towns in the area, for years. He went where he wanted, did as he pleased, and always seemed to evade the law, or if he was arrested he'd harass and terrify any witnesses into backing down.
Finally, Skidmore decided enough was enough, and farmers from Skidmore and a few other small towns held a meeting at the Skidmore Legion Hall where (according to later accounts) they planned to form a deputised legal posse to track McElroy's movements and protect some witnesses who had just sworn a statement against him. McElroy arrived in town not long after the meeting broke up, paid a quick visit to the tavern where most of the soon-to-be posse had gathered, and then got into his truck with his wife. He was about to light a cigarette when he was shot twice in the back of the head.
There were somewhere between twenty and sixty people in the area, because of the meeting; there were three different shooters who opened fire on McElroy's truck, though only two shots hit him. Nobody admits to seeing anything, and nobody in thirty years ever has.
It's a fascinating story in its own right, and I was curious to know more, but these things can slip the mind and it wasn't until I saw a follow-up article years later that I decided to do the research. A few weeks ago I picked up a book called In Broad Daylight which is an account of McElroy's life and the events leading up to and following his shooting.
It's not a very good book, actually. I can see where the author is going, trying to tell a thousand little stories about the people of Skidmore and bind them all up into the single skein of McElroy's shooting. But there are so many people he screwed and so many little legal skirmishes that I think it probably would have been more useful to tell it straight through and leave out the gritty little details of his legal dealings. I ended up reading about the first third of the book, then skipping forward to the chapter that talks about the lead-up to the shooting. I'm pretty sure I didn't miss much.
McElroy was an abusive rapist, as well as a thief and a vandal. He often had two women living with him at a time and over the course of his life had five or six wives, I think. It's hard to keep track. At any rate, what struck me most about the details I learned (as opposed to the broad strokes of the story) was how many kids he had. Most of the women who managed to escape McElroy moved far away with their children, but they all had a few kids. The book focuses on his three children by Alice Wood, and especially the eldest Juarez, who was apparently a favoured son though not by any stretch his eldest.
I found myself wondering what it must be like to be the child of a monster like McElroy, both in itself and because of the publicity he received in death. Most of his kids wouldn't spend much time in Skidmore or know their father or their half-siblings very well, and it must just be so strange to be a part of that -- to have a dozen siblings you don't know but are bound to by this horrible story. There's a fascination with the town and how it stood against all comers when the state police, the media, and later the FBI got involved, but that's just a portion of the story.
I can't really recommend In Broad Daylight as pleasure reading, though if you enjoy true crime as a genre you may get more out of it than I did. But the story of Skidmore is definitely interesting, though I imagine they'd prefer it be less so.
As we were getting ourselves found again, we either passed through the town of Skidmore or passed a sign announcing its presence, I don't recall which. Small heartland towns tend to look alike from the window of a minivan. Either way, something prompted one of my friends to turn to me and say, "Do you know about Skidmore?"
This is how I heard the story of Ken McElroy, who was shot in the middle of the day, in the middle of the main street of Skidmore, and whose killer has never been identified. When you hear the story from someone, it takes on the quality of a ghost story or a wild west myth -- McElroy, the town bully, was a livestock thief who'd been tormenting Skidmore, along with a few other small towns in the area, for years. He went where he wanted, did as he pleased, and always seemed to evade the law, or if he was arrested he'd harass and terrify any witnesses into backing down.
Finally, Skidmore decided enough was enough, and farmers from Skidmore and a few other small towns held a meeting at the Skidmore Legion Hall where (according to later accounts) they planned to form a deputised legal posse to track McElroy's movements and protect some witnesses who had just sworn a statement against him. McElroy arrived in town not long after the meeting broke up, paid a quick visit to the tavern where most of the soon-to-be posse had gathered, and then got into his truck with his wife. He was about to light a cigarette when he was shot twice in the back of the head.
There were somewhere between twenty and sixty people in the area, because of the meeting; there were three different shooters who opened fire on McElroy's truck, though only two shots hit him. Nobody admits to seeing anything, and nobody in thirty years ever has.
It's a fascinating story in its own right, and I was curious to know more, but these things can slip the mind and it wasn't until I saw a follow-up article years later that I decided to do the research. A few weeks ago I picked up a book called In Broad Daylight which is an account of McElroy's life and the events leading up to and following his shooting.
It's not a very good book, actually. I can see where the author is going, trying to tell a thousand little stories about the people of Skidmore and bind them all up into the single skein of McElroy's shooting. But there are so many people he screwed and so many little legal skirmishes that I think it probably would have been more useful to tell it straight through and leave out the gritty little details of his legal dealings. I ended up reading about the first third of the book, then skipping forward to the chapter that talks about the lead-up to the shooting. I'm pretty sure I didn't miss much.
McElroy was an abusive rapist, as well as a thief and a vandal. He often had two women living with him at a time and over the course of his life had five or six wives, I think. It's hard to keep track. At any rate, what struck me most about the details I learned (as opposed to the broad strokes of the story) was how many kids he had. Most of the women who managed to escape McElroy moved far away with their children, but they all had a few kids. The book focuses on his three children by Alice Wood, and especially the eldest Juarez, who was apparently a favoured son though not by any stretch his eldest.
I found myself wondering what it must be like to be the child of a monster like McElroy, both in itself and because of the publicity he received in death. Most of his kids wouldn't spend much time in Skidmore or know their father or their half-siblings very well, and it must just be so strange to be a part of that -- to have a dozen siblings you don't know but are bound to by this horrible story. There's a fascination with the town and how it stood against all comers when the state police, the media, and later the FBI got involved, but that's just a portion of the story.
I can't really recommend In Broad Daylight as pleasure reading, though if you enjoy true crime as a genre you may get more out of it than I did. But the story of Skidmore is definitely interesting, though I imagine they'd prefer it be less so.
